But above him, Skylash rose. Wrath incarnate, lightning wreathed her scales in burning veins of light. The sky bent around her as she exhaled. The bolt she loosed crashed into Rimeclaw’s ribs like judgment handed down from the storm itself.
Serenna gasped as Rimeclaw buckled and spun, rain and blood fanning in violent arcs. He fought to steady himself, vast wings flaring despite the wound, his colossal body twisting against the sky in defiance to stay aloft.
Torn wing hanging tattered, he drew breath like a bellows. For a moment, he tried to hover—an ancient titan stumbling through the clouds, wounded yet too proud to fall.
“If the king’s watching through his eyes,” Jassyn said beside her, wiping rain away from his face, “maybe he’s realized Skylash won’t be subdued so easily.”
Before Serenna could answer, a voice rumbled through her skull—low and guttural, cold as grave frost.
“I cannot leash thunder for the tyrant’s throne,”Rimeclaw snarled.
She knew that voice. She’d heard it once before, the first time a dragon had spoken to her through a Heart.
With a labored beat of his good wing, the dragon began to rise. Blood streamed behind him as he turned away, retreating rather than striking.
“But the chains rattle, and he calls me back across the sea,”Rimeclaw growled, each word heavy with resignation as he began limping into the clouds.“Punishment waits…and still I have no choice but to go.”
Serenna’s throat tightened as he vanished. For all his grandeur and might, he was only another weapon sheathed on command. And if the king could summon him from across the sea, what hope did any of them have of staying free?
Skylash veered from his defeated departure without a glance, her roar sundering the uncontested sky. Sparks streaked from her wings as she wheeled back toward the fleet. Lightning flashed toward the king’s ships, the druids, the rangers—all those left scattered in the Maw. Their forces attempted to flee her wrath, but not everyone could portal out.
Heart pounding, Serenna turned to Jassyn, the sky flickering around them in fractured pulses. Rain dripped off her armor and wings, the chill sinking deep even as her muscles burned from flight.
Only one path remained—to reach Skylash before she destroyed them all. Serenna saw no other choice, even if it felt like stepping off the edge of the world with no promise of wings to catch her—only the terrible certainty that if she didn’t try to fly, they would all fall.
Survival was no longer enough. TheyneededSkylash’s power, a storm that raged for their cause.
“I need to reorganize those of us left and help the injured,” Jassyn said, his gaze sweeping the lake. Ships burned and bodies clung to debris in the water, dracovae circling low to haul their wounded forces from the wreckage.
The remaining wraith had plunged into the chaos, rallying what fragments of their squads still held. Druids regrouped in pockets along the ridge as the broken fleet turned its attention skyward. The king’s forces hurled ropes of force toward Skylash, trying in vain to snare the storm.
“I’ll buy you time to get them out,” Serenna said, voice hoarse, the claws on her wing tips clenching. “I’ll…try to speak with her.”
Jassyn blinked, rain tracing the silver line of his scar. For a heartbeat he hesitated, as though he might tell her no or take the burden himself. Instead, he nodded, no argument rising to his tongue.
Somehow, that trust weighed heavier than refusal—proof that he believed she could reach the dragon.
“You’ve already done the impossible once today,” he said softly. “Just stay alive long enough to do it again.”
Then he was gone, wings folding as he dove toward the havoc raging below—where Vesryn flew above capsizing ships and Skylash hunted anything that moved through the Maw.
A flicker of motion broke through the curtain of rain, a dark shape slicing across the Blackreach. Lykor. An obsidian streak racing the wind. Toward Jassyn.
Of course he was here. The worry in Serenna’s chest eased by a breath—Jassyn wouldn’t face the chaos alone.
But one still remained unaccounted for.
Her gaze dragged across the scattered battles, but she saw no sign of Fenn and still didn’t feel his presence through the bond.
He’s safe,Serenna told herself, though the sky screamed otherwise as lightning flashed with every beat of the dragon’s wings. He was helping evacuate the wounded—he had to be.
Gathering her courage, Serenna hovered and reached outward to still the wind and silence the storm around her. Rain slowed to a drifting veil, sparks coiling without striking.
She drew a long breath, the air heavy with charge and consequence. Then she fixed her gaze on Skylash and flew.
CHAPTER 36
JASSYN
